Wayne Brady has never been shy about calling out Bill Maher, and in a recent appearance on Sara Jones’ podcast, he called the television host outright racist.
The conversation came up naturally when Jones brought up the ongoing challenge Brady has faced throughout his career, having his identity and blackness questioned by others. She pointed to Maher as a prime example of someone who had tried to define what blackness should look like, referencing a joke Maher made years ago suggesting that President Obama should be “less Wayne Brady” and more like a gangster rapper.
Brady did not hold back. “How dare you as a white man try to define this thing?” Brady said of Maher’s original comment about Obama. “He’s racist.”
Brady acknowledged that he actually had a history with Maher, going back to early appearances on Maher’s ABC political program ‘Politically Incorrect.’
“I grew up watching Bill Maher. I thought he was funny,” he said. But that changed. “When people tell you who they are,” Brady said.
He also recalled a moment at the Playboy Mansion years ago that stuck with him. “There was Bill Maher with two sisters on his arm,” Brady said. “I looked at him and I was like… this is a cat who believes that his proximity and things you can use gives you the right to say what you want to say about another people whose shoes you never walk in.”
Brady was careful to separate his feelings about Maher as a public figure from any personal hatred.
He said, “I don’t ha te Bill Maher. I don’t know him as a person like that. What I do know is his words. So, based on your words, I don’t like you as a human because you’re harmful to other people with the views that you espouse and the things that he said.”
He went further, addressing the platform Maher uses to spread those views. “It’s vitriolic because it encourages the asinine behaviors and reactions in those whose default setting is to be reductive of people,” Brady said.
